WADE'S POV
The steering wheel of my truck felt like it was made of ice, even though my palms were sweating enough to make my grip slip. I didn't stop at the bottom of the ridge. I didn't slow down for the stop sign at the intersection of Miller Road. I drove like the devil himself was sitting in my rearview mirror, but the truth was worse. The devil wasn't behind me. He was up on that Lookout, standing next to June with a hand that could crush steel like it was wet cardboard.
"Wade, slow down, man! You're gonna flip us!" Kent was shoved against the passenger door, his face the color of old library paste. He'd been shaking ever since we hit the tree line.
"Shut up, Kent!" I roared, the sound echoing in the cramped cab. "Did you see it? Tell me you saw it!"
"I saw... I saw the flashlight break," Kent stammered, his voice jumping an octave. "I heard that sound. That humming. It made my teeth ache, Wade. Like... like I was standing under a power line during a thunderstorm."
"Not the sound! The eyes!" I slammed my palm against the wheel. "He looked at me, Kent. Right before he told me to leave. His eyes... they weren't brown anymore. They weren't human. They were glowing. Like a cat's in the dark, but brighter. Gold. Like he had two miniature suns shoved into his skull."
Kent didn't answer. He just stared out the window at the passing blurred shapes of the Oakhaven woods. He wanted to go home. He wanted to pretend we'd never gone up there. But I couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt that vibration again—the way the air had seemed to turn into liquid around Adam Vance.
I didn't go to my house. I pulled the truck hard into the gravel lot of the Oakhaven Sheriff's Station. The neon "Open" sign flickered, casting a sickly red glow over the hood of my truck. My dad's cruiser was parked out front, the engine ticking as it cooled.
"What are we doing here?" Kent asked, his voice trembling. "Wade, your dad is gonna kill us for being up there."
"My dad needs to know," I said, my voice dropping into a cold, hard register. "He's the Sheriff. He's supposed to protect this town from things that shouldn't be here. And Adam Vance? He's at the top of that list."
I didn't wait for Kent. I pushed through the heavy glass doors, the bell above the entrance ringing with a sharp, accusing metallic chime. The station was quiet, smelling of floor wax and the bitter, burnt-coffee scent that always seemed to follow my father.
Sheriff Brandt was sitting at his desk, his sleeves rolled up, a stack of incident reports in front of him. He looked up when I entered, his eyes narrowing as he took in my disheveled hair and the way my chest was heaving.
"Wade?" He stood up, his hand instinctively dropping toward his duty belt. "What happened? You get into a wreck?"
"No," I panted, leaning against the wooden counter that separated the public from the law. "No wreck. It's him, Dad. It's Vance."
My father's expression shifted from concern to a weary, jagged annoyance. "We talked about this, Wade. I told you to stay away from those boys. I told you I wasn't going to have another gym-class scuffle on my desk."
"This wasn't a scuffle!" I shouted, the volume of my voice making the deputy in the corner look up from his computer. "We went to the Lookout. June was with him. I was just... I was just going to talk to her, Dad. I swear."
"At the Lookout?" My father's eyes turned into flint. "I told you that ridge is private property in some spots and a liability in the rest. What did he do?"
"He didn't just 'do' something," I said, my hands shaking as I held them out in front of me. "He caught my flashlight. A heavy-duty Maglite. He didn't hit it. He didn't drop it. He just... he squeezed it. And it shattered. Like it was a lightbulb. It didn't even cut his hand."
My father paused. He looked at my hands, then at Kent, who had shuffled in behind me, looking like he wanted to dissolve into the floorboards. "Shattered? Wade, those casings are aircraft-grade aluminum."
"I don't care what they're made of!" I felt a sob of pure, unadulterated frustration trying to break out of my throat, but I shoved it down. "And his eyes, Dad. When he got close to me... they turned gold. They were glowing. I'm telling you, he's not a farm boy. He's not even a person. He's a monster masquerading in denim."
The station went silent. My father didn't laugh. He didn't scold me. He just stared at me, his face becoming a mask of professional neutrality—the look he used when he was deciding whether to believe a witness or book a suspect.
"Gold eyes," he repeated softly.
"Yes," I whispered. "And the humming. The air... it felt like it was vibrating. Like a hornet's nest was inside my chest. He's dangerous, Dad. He's up there with June right now, and God knows what he is."
My father looked over at the deputy. "Miller, pull the Vance file. Everything we have on Silas and his 'grandsons.'"
"We don't have much, Sheriff," the deputy said, already typing. "Just some property records and the school enrollment papers. The transcripts came from some academy in the city, but... honestly, the digital trail is pretty thin."
"Keep digging," Brandt commanded. He walked around the counter and put a heavy hand on my shoulder. His grip was firm, grounding. "Go home, Wade. Take Kent with you. Don't say a word about this to anyone else. Not Sarah, not your coaches. Nobody."
"Are you going to arrest him?" I asked, a spark of hope flickering in the dark of my mind.
"I can't arrest a boy for having 'glowy eyes' and breaking a flashlight, Wade," my father said, but his eyes were looking past me, toward the dark window that faced the ridge. "But I can sure as hell start asking Silas Vance some questions he should have answered twenty years ago."
I walked back to my truck, my legs feeling like lead. I'd done it. I'd sounded the alarm. But as I sat in the driver's seat, the memory of that Golden Light didn't fade. It felt like it was burned into my retinas, a permanent scar on the way I saw the world.
Adam Vance had taken June to the Lookout to "observe" the stars. But I was the one who had seen the truth. I was the one who knew that the quiet, calculating boy in the back of the classroom was a freak of nature.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, I looked up at the moon. It was big and silver, looking down on Oakhaven like it was a petri dish. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like the varsity captain of a small town. I felt like an ant standing on the tracks, listening to the hum of a train that was too big to stop.
My father was going to dig. And I knew, with a bone-deep certainty, that whatever he found at the end of that shovel wasn't going to be something Oakhaven was ready to face.
The "Vance Protocol" was about to meet the Sheriff's Department. And I was going to be there to watch the monster burn.